Do you know where you're going to?

"Do you like the things that life is showing you?"
 Diana Ross - Theme From Mahogany.

Talk about slack blogging! I'd almost forgotten how it works...

Having been so slack there is certainly plenty to talk about now, though the primary reason for the absence, work, will not be discussed except to say there has been plenty of it, and making time for blogging has sadly been low on the list of priorities. After a long day in front of the computer, more time there to blog just doesn't seem so appealing.

Things are starting to quiet down now, marginally, so the time and inclination to gather thoughts and put keys to electrons has arrived!

The farmlet has been cruising along in winter mode, though I guess it was barely Autumn last time we spoke. We've lost two of the older chooks (6+ years old) but all the other creatures are doing well. The vegetable gardens have been planted out for winter production, and are currently (slowly) undergoing a makeover, as time permits. Recycled hardwood timbers are forming the surrounds, with crushed granite for the paths. Getting rid of the grass paths should go a long way toward making managing the weeding easier, and the proper raised beds will provide better drainage and growing conditions, hopefully. We've also made a new space for a perennial bed, currently with our new rhubarb patch, mints and horseradish, which has cleaned up what was a dauntingly disappointing corner of the patch previously.

So where are we at the moment? The last few posts we were in a quandary about where we were headed. We were off to Victoria or Tasmania, but weren't really sure.

The last couple of months have included a development that helped provide a bit of external impetus and a good dose of clarity. The development is more of an un-development, being that we've discovered a happy family of termites munching away at our house. This is not so surprising for an Australian house, but it is concerning if you're trying to sell the place. The inspector reckons they've done a fair bit of damage to the place, but without pulling plasterboard off we can't know for sure.

So we were faced with reducing the price we had put on the place in order to secure a sale, either that or doing some reconstruction to repair whatever damage there was. Combining this with our uncertainty over the idea of moving and we were seriously doubting the sensibility of the idea.

In the first case, we were torn about moving away from here. We've got a lot of good friends, and it's a great community. Whilst the climate is not ideal, and it's a long way from the beach, the community advantages (among others) outweigh the disadvantages as far as considering it from a post-peak oil survival situation.

After a fair bit of soul-searching and considering various scenarios we've decided we're going to stay on here, at the very least until the kids finish their schooling. Stability during those years of life is just as important as any other considerations. And beside that, the Permaculture Designer's Manual has a very good section on designing for deserts if things get really bad here :-)

So where to now? We've started re-assessing the place in terms of layout and planning, re-considering things so that we can attempt to fit even more producing plants in. There's certainly plenty of space here.

We will need to work on the water situation a bit, but there's nothing out of the ordinary that needs to be done there.

The main issue is going to be the house. Our two storey architectural monstrosity is not the best construction to start with, throw in some termite damage and I'm going to sleep daily wondering whether I'll be waking up downstairs in the kids room...

There's a nice spot in the front paddock that can fit a house in, and we've had a brief discussion with Council about it and they can't see any problems with building a new place and then demolishing this one. We've played around with some basic designs and think we can fit a complete single-storey house of equivalent usable size to the current one, into the same footprint as this one (yep, that's how badly this one is laid out!) Given that we already have a livable, if not enjoyable, house on-site considering owner building isn't so far fetched either, though I know DW will want it to be complete within a reasonable period.

All that remains is to sell off the farm block to free up some cash flows, though we can begin certain elements out of our normal budgets with a bit of saving. Planning our own house will be a new experience, and we'll need to figure out things like whether we see a draughtsperson first or an engineer, but all of that sort of stuff should be exciting enough, and keep us occupied while we wait to sell the block. And if it never sells at least our neighbour out there has a nice extra piece of land to use, and we've got a good, if distant, supply of firewood, while ever we've got fuel to get there.

It's funny, but when you're thinking of leaving a place you see it in an entirely different light to when you're thinking of staying. For one thing my shed is much better organised and a lot tidier now (lol) and we've planted a many more trees already. All the other projects that I'd been putting off for a long time, expecting to commence them when we moved to a new place, have also had another look over, things like forges, furnaces, potting sheds, cellars, biogas systems, a pumping system for the pond, the list goes on. Not going elsewhere gives me plenty of time to concentrate on being here, so there should be plenty of activity to report on in the future!

And So It Goes

It's been almost a month to the day since the last post, and I can't say a lot has happened in that time. I'll be meeting with the real estate agent on Tuesday to organise for the block to be put on the market. We had had some interest from someone that was looking to buy the neighbouring property, who wanted our block for it's access to the water, but in the end they decided they wanted to be closer to the nearby city. At the time it was a positive sign, because selling the block is going to be challenging, to put it politely.

We're holding off marketing this place now, until we sell the other block. We need a place to live while we wait to clear that one out and consolidate our lives. Just got to hope everything doesn't come crashing down around our ears in the meantime, on both the personal and global levels. It's still up on the internet site, and if it sells, well, that's the way it's meant to be, but we wont be pushing it via an agent for now.

I finished the tiling in the kitchen, well, almost. DW has asked that we tile the back of the cupboard that faces out into the room, rather than trying to do anything else with it, so the job got a little bit bigger, but it shouldn't take much. It's looking a lot better in there, that's for sure.

The newly planted trees survived a bout of heat and have made it through to our current rainy period. It's still hot, and strangely muggy, but at least we're getting some rain, and all the weeds look so nice and green :-P

Further sad news on the vehicle front, we are now without any kind of work vehicle. After the adventure with the little truck, not two weeks ago the trusty ute died on me, right in the middle of Sydney, on the way home after attending meetings for work. It made it all the way down there okay, but just couldn't struggle back, throwing the timing chain as I was motoring back along the M4. Needless to say this has left us in a pretty tight spot, especially considering we've got so much stuff to move around the place to get all the plans in order. There is something of a synchronicity in this as well, even though a negative kind.

Yet again I'm left wondering about the validity of any of the plans we dream up. The Universe is either challenging us or obstructing us, but it doesn't appear to be giving us anything in the way of clear guidance. The various things I read around the place tell me we're heading towards ever more trying times, yet we find ourselves in a position that is, if anything, even less prepared than we were two years ago. It could well be that that is the message, that we need to clean everything up, get it all sorted out, before we can move forward. It certainly started out by cleaning two useful vehicles (and associated expenses) out of our lives :-) Off to a good start perhaps!?

Let's Try Again

Welcome 2010...

The summer holidays are over now, for me at least, though the kids are still bouncing off the walls for some time to come. In the rush of the festive season we didn't get up to much, though we had plenty of time to sit and consider our options in amongst the celebrations.

Once Christmas was all wrapped up we shared our plans for moving on with the family, and surprisingly got a positive response from all of them, though of course there is the expected concerns over moving so far away and not being able to see the kids as they grow up.

I've spent a lot of time browsing the online real estate via Google Maps, and searching the weather records for ideal spots in our wide brown land. There are a few areas down south that seem to fit the bill, with regions getting in excess of 800mm, and up to 1200mm per annum of rain, with fairly moderate temperatures. There are even some nice properties in those areas within our anticipated price range.

We have also looked over at Tasmania, but the east coast, where most of the properties are available experiences very similar rainfall to our current location, and I haven't yet seen a decent property on the west coast where they do get the rain. The northerly regions were also promising, but they've been ruled out as they'll be experiencing wilder weather as time goes by, and already suffer from things like fruit fly, ticks and disease carrying mosquitoes.

So we've picked a direction, and now have to get the sale of our current properties out of the way so we can start afresh. In some ways it's very exciting, but it's also very daunting as we've collected a lot of useful stuff over the years that we'll most likely have to get rid of. Getting rid of it means starting out with next to nothing again, and getting a property up and running requires a lot of bits and pieces. At this stage we're going to have to jump that hurdle when we come to it. It may be practical to transport a lot of stuff to the new place, in which case we'll select the valuable items that are hard to replace and pass the rest on.

So the first half of 2010 sees us struggling to cope with financial problems thanks to the good old tax office and a complete lack of good, timely, advice from the accountant, and our attempts to sell our properties. With the greatest of luck the second half might see us in an entirely different place!

We've started planting some of the trees we've been growing up here to take to the new place, no point trying to cart them to the new place, and no point planting them at the new place where we wont be able to give them the care they need. We still might put some more out there in winter time if it hasn't sold, as we have a lot of trees and there isn't enough space here to plant them. I guess we could also have a plant sale...

Fun times ahead, let's just hope the world situation stays relatively stable or improves a bit even, at least until we get all this sorted out!

Best wishes to you all for a peaceful and prosperous 2010!

A Finished Shed

Yes, we finally did it. Weekend before last we were able to complete the shed! With help from DW and DM the gutters went up, the roof went on, and and all the final bits and pieces were completed. I can't say it was fun, a day on a glaring and hot roof isn't the most pleasant way to spend time. It's strange, but now, at the end of it all I'm left feeling a bit empty and unsure of where to go next.

That is not helped by some recent bad news. We heard from the accountant who tells us that thanks to some new rules we wont be sharing our partnership income the same way this year, which hands DW a refund, but lands me with a very hefty tax bill, due by March (on top of covering the two BAS statements that come in quick succession early in the new year)

Sadly that was not the end of our woes as the faithful truck sprang a big leak in the radiator on Sunday. Unfortunately I was stuck on the highway with nowhere to pull off for half a kilometre or more, so by the time I rolled to a standstill the cabin was filled with smoke and the temperature guage was maxed out. There was a small bit of luck, having a great friend who just happens to be a diesel fitter, and is well equipped for such adventures. He was able to pull me out of the awkward spot and over the course of the day we got it towed back to his place and then proceeded to pull the head off and see what damage had been done. The initial investigations proved inconclusive, no obvious evidence of damage to the head, so he's getting a second opinion over the next couple of days.

Needless to say it's been a trying week. Last week and the one before I was asking the Universe for a sign, for some direction about where to head with our lives. It's usually pretty good to us, though as with all such things the signs are never clear, but usually enough to go on with. Not sure how to interpret this turn of events at all.

Admittedly some clarity has come out of it. DW is not happy here, or with the new place. It's only marginally moister than the current location, and a fraction of a touch cooler, which isn't enough in the grand scheme of things, factoring in climate change. One of the biggest issues is we're still faced with at least a year of work before we can think of moving onto the block. And that means at least a year before we can think of doing anything much out there, especially to do with larger animals.

So we've discussed our options. One of those options is a move to a better climate with more reliable rain, and a move onto a place that already has a house upon it. That way we can move and start, in one go, just like that, rather than selling one place, moving, building, moving, then starting. Given we're currently supporting two mortgages that would if combined buy us a reasonable place somewhere else, what's not to like about the plan?

Perhaps all this grief over the new block was the Universe trying to give us a sign, and now we're getting a bit of punishment for not listening in the first place? lol! Then again, maybe it's totally the opposite? Aaargh! I'm afraid to ask for more signs so perhaps we will have to soldier on in a state of uncertainty (not that there is ever real certainty).

So, where to now? Christmas holiday plans are pretty well ruined. There'll be no transporting of stuff to the block thanks to the death of the truck (unless by some miracle we can fix it this coming weekend) though there is still plenty of opportunity for cleaning up around the place before the festive season. Beyond that, it's a matter of making a decision and acting upon it. During our conversations the following list of desirable traits in a new property has come up:

• Only 1 to 1.5 hours from the coast.
• Plentiful rainfall through the year - median of 800mm plus.
• General temperature range up to 35 or so.
• Water, preferably on a river or large perennial creek. Even better if we can float in the tinny all the way to the coast and have the kids row us back after a day of fishing :-)
  
• House and sheds.
• 25+ acres (we figure higher rainfall means better carrying capacity, so we can do more with a smaller amount of land.)
• Reasonable soil.

Not a lot to wish for, is it now? lol! While we're at it we better wish for people to buy our current properties, otherwise all these plans are coming to a grinding halt before they've even started moving...

All the best for the summer solstice celebrations and/or Christmas!

The Madness Continues

It's been a very busy couple of weeks around the place! Between work and play-work there hasn't been a lot of time for much else, but over the weekend I managed to take a few pictures so that you can see what we've been up to, as well as reading the usual verbiage...

The toilet roll seedlings

We did make it out camping, and a great weekend it was. Started out a little windy, but shortly after erecting a screen of tarps to reduce the worst of it it all died down. The night was incredibly cold, and we woke to a thick frost and a case of the shivers which took a while by the fire to subside (I'm sure it wasn't totally due to the wine consumed the night before, the frost must have been partly to blame!) In addition to a long and leisurely walk to the creek we did a bit of digging in the crystal mines and found a few nice specimens, though nothing truly remarkable.

Before leaving we also marked out the new spot for the shed so that the neighbour will be able to pop over whenever he has the time and inclination and level the site for us. The location isn't quite as good as the last with regard to preserving the views, but it shouldn't do too much harm. At the very least it will divide it up into "garden rooms" with framed views lol!

Chooks on patrol

This Saturday just gone I took off out there again, though it was a slow start and I didn't make it out there until 11am. A good part of the early morning was spent welding two pipes into one longer one that was going to be the final stay for the eastern fence of the orchard. I'll admit now that I need a lot of catchup practice on the welding...

The stay went in swiftly upon arrival, so I dove into putting that fence up, being the longest and most daunting. It's only 50m long, but still daunting, so I hate to think what some of the longer ones at 200 - 300 m long will be like, though I might be able to take a few days for them. I had planned to tie salvaged chicken mesh over the top of the hingejoint to stop the goats from getting themselves stuck but pulling the mesh out of the dump turned out to be a whole lot more complicated than I'd anticipated. I ended up wiring the remaining portion of a roll of foot netting over the bigger holes where they usually run into trouble, and finished up the rest with more hingejoint offset enough so the holes are now too small to fit a goat head. I've now only got the 18m and the 30m sides to go. I'm thinking I may need to fork out the money for a roll of netting, though I'm going to try pulling the mesh out of the dump with a winch first.

The eastern fence

I also had a chance to speak to the neighbour, and he thinks he'll be up to do the shed site shortly. Fingers crossed it might be ready for next weekend, then we can begin the joy of digging the holes for the footings! Can't wait!

Spent Sunday getting back into cleaning the farmlet up. As long-time sufferers of this blog may know we were hoping to go on the local market in Spring, which is now here... Still a bit behind that schedule.

Started the day out fixing the front fence up so that it looked more neat, and contemplated the fence that needed to be cut to get the sewer through, and gave up thoughts of trying to repair it after the adventures with the other one (short lengths don't strain well... even after many years of trying) I think we'll get some lengths of pig mesh or sheep yard mesh and make a solid fence that way.

Following fencing we went to the local Show for a while. The kids had a ride on a pony, a few zooms down the jumping-castle cross slippery dip, a browse through the exhibits for the competitions, and a look at the four-odd specimens of poultry entered this year, and the various goats, sheep and cattle. After that it was a jump on a different castle, a dagwood dog each, and then a sit-down in the shade while they judged the junior show princesses and jackaroos, and then held a fashion parade. A choc-top each, which required a fair bit of cleaning up afterward, and we judged the show experience complete for another year, so set off back home.

Orchard in bloom.

A delightful (27 degree) afternoon was spent compiling a load of rubbish for the tip, which was carted off, and then trying to hide the greater amount of stuff that I brought back with me. I'm now the proud owner of a good stack of short pieces of corrugated & colourbond roofing, and a weighty pile of star picket pieces in various lengths. The roofing will be ideal for chook sheds and similar projects, and the old star pickets will be great to cut down for stakes for building garden edging. A most profitable excursion! Rather than unload all that lot I started adding to it all of the remaining outdoor goods that can safely live outside over at the new place, which further helped to clean the place up.

We've decided that as soon as we have the shed built we're going to market, we're not going to worry about the millions of jobs that we could complete in order to try and get a better price. we'd end up staying here forever! If we're going into a rental next then we need a place to store everything, so the shed is a priority, but once that's done, no more excuses!! So maybe there is only 3 or 4 weeks to go? Maybe...

Off To Market

We reached a point the other day at the Flood Street Farmlet. A special point, where we realised were faced with spending the rest of our lives finishing up all of the odd jobs and changing things here and there, to get it just right. We could see that we would potentially carry on in that fashion for quite a while to come. We seemed to be procrastinating over putting the place on the market.

We're unprepared, very unprepared for moving, but then, we've never really been prepared before, and we've moved a fair bit. The DW put her foot down and said she wanted the place on the market, wanted to be off on our next adventure. I "ummed" and even "aarghed". I said "what about if we just get job X done?" ... "and then perhaps job Y?", and it was pointed out that this was why we were never going to put the place on the market if we did not do it straight away.

I like to finish (some) things. The problem is that a home, especially the unusual kind of home that also includes food production elements, is an ongoing, life-long project. It never stops growing and changing, so the bar for "complete" was always going to be creeping off into the future. Each job done was seen in terms of better saleability (well, sort of, I've always enjoyed changing things around, even in rental properties), but they would only reveal more jobs needing completion that also affected the perfectness of the place (let me tell you it's far from perfect!) I needed to accept that it would never be perfect, and that it needed to go "as-is".

And so we made the call and the agent has been for a tour. He tells us it's a challenge. Not because the place is bad, mind you, just because it is relatively unique, given that it's a big house on a big block in a small village, with the orchard, berry patch, vege gardens and poultry houses. It's a lifestyle in a package, but that in turn somewhat limits it's appeal to only those within the demographic to which that lifestyle appeals.

Sure, it could sell to anyone, but the value of the changes made over the last few years would not be apparent or worth anything to such an "anyone", which is where the challenge lies. The "anyone" might see all the changes as needing a bulldozer to make the block suitable for something as horrendous as subdivision.


Within a fortnight or two the contract will be drawn up, and we'll be able to go on the market. We've got that long to finish off a few jobs, and transport a lot of our resource piles away to neaten the place up. And a lot of mowing to be done. And, a lot of hoping, for we sincerely hope that someone with similar ideas to ourselves comes along and takes up the Flood Street Farmlet challenge.

Given the current economic climate I doubt we will be able to be choosy. "So you plan to bulldoze it eh? Can't sell it to you then, sorry!", sounds all nice and idealistic, but when it comes down to it, our resources are currently spread thin, and we really need to concentrate them again so we can get moving on the new place. Time and money spent on this place would be so much better spent on our new block. It's up to the next people taking this place on to put their stamp on it, and much more stamping on our part will only make it harder for them ;-)

Plans For Drums And Other Melodies

Back to the mundane world of pseudo-farm life for a post.

I've got a couple of plans fermenting at the moment, thanks to the gift of an apple bin full of 20 litre drums. Nothing like a source of raw materials to inspire all sorts of ideas. Hopefully not a case of having a hammer and everything looking like a nail...

Project number 1 is a charcoal and ash separation plant. I've been separating the charcoal and ash from the house fireplace so that I can make use of the charcoal in the forge. It's a messy job using a scrap of mesh over a bucket, so this little bit of work should make it a whole lot more efficient. The picture below shows the main cradle, there will be another similar one beneath it without the mesh windows. This will catch the ash and channel it into one drum, the charcoal will go out the end into a second one.

I'm still toying with the idea of grading the charcoal into two lots, those pieces of a size to be useful in the forge and other smaller bits that can be used in the garden as biochar. That will involve a very fine mesh in the upper window and a larger one in the lower window and some modifications to the catching cradle beneath to allow a second drum.

All that needs to be done now is find a use for the ash. At the moment this is being stored in a feed bag in the shed. With the exception of turning it into lye and hoping I can get hold of enough fat for soap I'm currently at a loss for ideas...

The second project will be a roller that I can drag behind the ute to compact road base. We've got quite a bit of road building to do out at Lyndhurst, and I'd like to do the early stages of it using hard work and the ute if possible. The plan is that we'll get truck loads of local road base dropped in the rough area, grade it out fairly level (now there's a project, building something to allow this task to be done with the ute!) and then roll it firm with the roller.

I've previously built a person powered roller by punching a hole in the bottom of a drum, fixing a bit of gal pipe centred through the drum, liberally greased, and then filling it with concrete and basalt rocks. A series of these that can be slid onto a longer pole and then hooked into a harness to be towed behind the ute should work well enough. I've also considered using two 44 gallon drums to do it, which would produce a better end result, but such a contraption would need to be made on-site as transporting the finished product out there would be tricky, to say the least.

In other news, and other plans, we've finally settled on a basic plan for moving forward overall. It was stressful for a time there trying to figure out the best way to juggle all of the competing demands to try and get ourselves out onto the new block. We've given up thinking about a full blown shed at this point, our outgoings so closely match incomings that having the resources to do that isn't going to happen for some time.

Instead we're going to get a shipping container moved out there, which is an economical means of securely storing the majority of the “junk” (resources!) currently in the shed. We will also be moving the site office out there and working on rigging it up as my office. This should involve a phone line and enough power for a single light and a laptop (assuming I can fit my current systems onto a laptop and run them with sufficient speed and reliability) The laptop should last for three or four hours on a charge from home each day, then continue with a top-up from whatever alternative power system we can implement for the remaining hours of the working day. We'll probably need a bit of power for the actual phone and answering machine, I don't really fancy going back to the old tin can catch me if you can style of communication.

Once we know I can work out there we can move into rental mode. We've minimized the stuff we need to cart around, and removed the inconvenience of re-establishing a home office every time we need to shift to a new rental. Rental mode means selling mode. We can stick this place on the market and get into the rest of the project. The added bonus will be that if I'm working out there daily it will be easy to water a few trees in the morning or evening, so we can start to get some real plantings going on out there.

Once we've sold this place we'll be in a position (as long as the economic sphere keeps it's spokes in place for a while yet) to build and kit out a shed for temporary accommodation. Then it's on to building the house itself. For the shed we are thinking a rammed earth construction. We were going to go with a skillion roof for ease of sticking it together, but sizing the timbers on that for a decent span leads me to believe it would be cheaper to go with a gable type roof. I've acquired some curved I-beam that would make a nice roof shape, just have to find some way of calculating spans and designing webbing to suit. Should be fun :-P

It's a grand plan, ambitious and all that, but I figure if I can build the charcoal and ash separation gizmo then anything is possible!!

Another Quick Update

Yet another month flown by! I wont bother making excuses for not posting, they're the same as the usual ones ;-)

I've calmed down since my water crisis, and essentially given up on the idea of having a lot of massive dams, at least for the moment. We've decided we'll have a single large dam to the capacity of our maximum harvestable right, situated at the bottom of hill, where three gullies feed into one. It's a nice spot for a dam.

The rest of our water needs we will handle through swales/contour banks. This will help prevent erosion on our very steep block, as well as ensuring any water that does fall takes the long way round on it's journey to the creek. If we can maximise the work it does then we'll be as well off as if we stored it in the first place.

We're still tossing up a lot of ideas for cropping, nothing has been settled yet. Having our water plans sorted out (sort of) allows us to make some more serious decisions, at least with respect to dumping some ideas. We wont be growing a commercial crop of hazelnuts for one, though we may still have a crack at some olives.

We're also toying with the idea of a bit of herbage. The DW really loves herbs, and so do I, so I think they'd be perfect given our inclinations. We will of course have to do a lot of market research before we move in that direction, but it allows an avenue of diversity. One of our axioms for this adventure is "not all of our eggs in one basket".

Part of our building process involves putting in a 5m or bigger stock grid on the council road (it's not theirs yet, and they may be sent the bill for it before they can have it, lol!) and we've been covered a lot of suppliers for prices. Thankfully we found a relatively local supplier who has them for half the price we've been quoted to date, so that is a bit of good news. I just hope we can take advantage of it before steel prices shoot through the roof.

Our other option is of course to convince the landowner on the other side of the council road that it is more economical to fence his paddock off, even though he loses a scrap of grazing land (that belongs to council anyway). This option is half the price of the lowest priced grids.

The new farm is generally on hold until we get the current farmlet officially on the market (it's sort of on there now, but not properly). We're working through the painting, and have finished off the tiling, so it's slowly getting there. One of the major hurdles will be when we want to move all our accumulated resources out to the new place. Storage there is currently nil, so we're going to need to implement some solutions for that. We have contemplated containers, and may end up going that route, they're almost as economical as a shed (floorspace per dollar wise) without the construction headaches.

So many up in the air plans can get confusing and cause an undue amount of stress. Thankfully it's the weekend now and we're planning a campfire out the back tonight (in fact I think it's already lit!). Sausages, coleslaw and fire-taters, with toasted marshmallows for desert. A great way to wind down from the working week before getting into the working (but infinitely more satisfying) weekend.

A Quick Update

The silly season has drawn to a close now, or at least I'm hoping it has. The eldest son is still on holidays so his unique style of play still reverberates around the house, and they are all expecting visitors out later today, so it's not exactly going to be peaceful, but my holidays are over so things are returning to normal.

The Christmas period has been quiet in terms of progress with the new land, the council shut down so the changes we need to get through were stalled, and therefore everything else was as well. Hopefully they have returned to work now, and things will once again start moving along. There are under three months to go until we need to settle, and a lot needs to happen in that time. Realistically it shouldn't take too long to get it all done, but as always it depends on events occurring in a certain order, so trouble with any one of them puts a stop on the whole process.

My FIL has kindly offered to take his bulldozer out to the land and level the house site for us, which will be a substantial cost saving. Other than leveling the site we need to put in some erosion control, and build the entrance to council standards. I can have the entrance and erosion control done in a weekend, my FIL reckons the leveling will take the same. The trouble is we need to have the house site moved before we can proceed with that work, and the construction certificate issued. Moving the house site is our current stumbling block, but should be resolved this week (fingers crossed).

The Flood Street Farmlet has not been entirely neglected over this time, even though the focus of the blogging has been on the new land. The vegetables are growing very well, corn is starting to form cobs, we've been eating cucumbers, zucchinis and beans for some time now, and our late planted tomatoes are getting close to ripening. The potatoes are looking a little wilted, we've not had any rain for some time now, and we've returned to the usual struggle of trying to water everything within a short enough span to allow it enough moisture to survive. We're expecting around 37 degrees today, the hottest this summer, so things have been pleasantly mild to slightly too hot, which is great. Hopefully today is not going to be a change in regime, but rather a momentary aberration.

I was able to put part of my holidays to constructive use, the rotting front porch has been replaced with a nice new decking, and a bit of extra support added to stop it wobbling like a trampoline. I'll still need to paint all of the eaves and touch up other areas, but overall the outside is getting close to a "ready to sell" state. This leaves us considering what to do with the "lovely" carpet in the lounge room. Do we rip it up and go timber floor, replace it, or leave it for the next folks to change to their heart's desire? We realise there is too much to do to get the house into a state where it would be perfect, but our feeling is that the next owners will not be happy with that either, and will want to alter it to suit their own tastes, so we would be effectively wasting money to do too much. I guess the motto is something along the lines of just enough so that it doesn't look too awful :)

More Than A Hint

I've been actively resisting getting too excited about the new land, until now! I can't believe that another month has slipped by in that time, but it was certainly well spent.

This morning we heard that our loan for the land has been approved, meaning we can get in and sign the contract sometime in the next few days (well, probably not over the weekend, but sometime)

We may still have up to six months to wait before settlement, given that we need to get a DA approved on the house and site we prefer, and the vendor needs to register a boundary change, but still, that's six months to success, rather than eternity to no result at all.

Now issues that were previously not of great concern can come to the forefront. How do we afford to get the power on to the site? At somewhere in the vicinity of 40k that will be a challenge.

Then, do we go the owner builder route, or fork out the extra cash to get someone else to do it in a reasonable amount of time? The big issue with that part of the plan is that finance for the building would require selling our current residence, which would mean making some sort of arrangement to live elsewhere in the meantime.

This is the tough question, and is tied in to the power issue. If we went with someone else building it we would potentially be able to roll the power costs up into the building loan, allowing it all to be done in good time. Otherwise we need to find the money for the power before any other work can begin out there, and then find time and money to do each step of the building. With the two mortgages we may be a bit too stretched to accomplish much.

As for living somewhere else whilst building went on, that would be very difficult for us to do. It would be hard to leave this place for a move to town, even for the few months it would take to build, though that is perhaps overly optimistic and we could be waiting a year, and there's still a lot of things we'd like to do here before we could feel like we were passing on something worthwhile to the next folks to take it up. On top of that we'd like to propagate all the fruit trees we've collected, so that will need to wait until next year at least.

I guess yet again we will leave the question for a while, and that mysterious force that seems to propel us forward on our path will come up with a solution, it has done so far on this roller-coaster ride, for which we are most grateful.

I would like to share another bit of "universal assistance" we've been gifted with. Due to the way the deal is structured we were looking at waiting up to a year before settlement could occur. This was causing me some concern, as when we get started we'd love to do it sooner rather than later. I'd resigned myself to waiting that year, and had left it.

The solicitor requested the inclusion of a clause in the contract to cover refinancing in the event the whole process did go longer than six months, as we could only get the finance held open for that long. After that we would need to apply for a new loan.

The vendor, upon hearing of this, was not impressed, thinking we were setting it up so we could bail out, rather than understanding that we would need to refinance as the loan offer would expire. Once he had this explained to him, he was off to his solicitor and organised that his 9 month boundary adjustment time was to be 3 months, resulting in a total time to settlement of 6 months. Just like that the year of waiting is halved, and happiness, of course, doubled!!

We've got the most exciting bit to go now. We can begin to plan where things will go, in a pseudo-permaculture fashion. We need to run the block as a money spinner in order to meet tax office requirements, so we will need to blend that requirement with our desire for a lifestyle as self-sufficient-ish as possible. It's a challenge to look forward to.

I've always enjoyed propagating trees, they have such a permanence about them that growing them from seed gives me much greater satisfaction than any other type of plant. Up to now I'd had to avoid growing too many as there just was not the room for them here. 6 Oak seedlings in the glasshouse are now the beginning of a new age of propagational joy, we should have enough room to fit in an entire forest now :)

Thanks!

Hints Of The Future

The last month or so has been jam packed with things to keep me occupied. Work has been super-hectic with a major project, which should be calming down at the end of the week as it enters stage 2. I should be able to gain some semblance of normality once the requirement to work until the ungodly hours of the morning is done away with.

Those two special days in the week that are called "weekend" have similarly been consumed with both work and driving to "Sydney" on a regular basis. My dad is moving, and his sheds have become the Steptoe & Son of my dreams. Almost everything he considered throwing out has been accepted, loaded and transported the 400 odd Km's back home.

In reviewing my haul I came to an interesting conclusion. Nearly everything I've idly wished for over the last few months has now come my way through this serendipity.

We have a bodgy standard rural pipe connecting the mains to the house, courtesy of the original inhabitants. In our clay soil, once summer hits the ground moves and the pipe bursts with regularity. So after the last bursting I left the hole open thinking I would get some green line poly and do the job properly. Life got in the way and I never made it to town to get the pipe. The DW's desire that I should fill in the hole won out, and it was done. A few weeks later I arrive at dad's, and lo and behold on offer is close to a full roll of green line poly. Will the miracles of wishes never cease? Indeed not!!

I'd also wished for an outdoor sink, received. A bathtub for the water chestnuts, received. A completely open flyscreen to replace the half closed one on the front door? Recevied. A bike to ride? Done times two. A 44 gallon drum to make a charcoal "factory"? Got one of those too.

When discussing this with my brother he mentioned the secret. I thought, the what? Then he clarified that I needed capitals in there. "The Secret". He's heard a bit about this, and thinks it's the same thing. Wish for things and the universe provides them. Takes me back to the days of youthful idealism reading Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay and wishing it were all so easy. Maybe there is something in it after all?

Now we've been considering moving for some time, idle thoughts, nothing concrete yet, though they have been less and less idle as time has gone by. My dear mother has been telling us to do it sooner rather than later, so we can get fruit trees up and running before the kids are too old to be interested in eating fruit etc etc. Golden advice all of it. So after a recent conversation with her I decided to speak to our mortgage advisor (now she hasn't asked for advertising, but we're chuffed with the help we received on this place, and the help to date on our new adventure, so it would be remiss of me to not name names, Kylie McFarlane at Aussie in Springwood) who helped us into this home, just to see what options were available to us, to see how we would go about moving our plans forward.

Well, you wouldn't believe it but there were options for us, and pretty good ones. The message was, find something you like and we'll go from there.

A short while later we turned up a nice block of land, over in a good area as far as our climate requirements went. We ummed and ahhh'd over it, trying to decide whether it was still too soon, but then thought, what they hey, the universe will let us know whether it's possible or not (or the bank managers at least).

So now, were just waiting to see if the finance will be approved. It hasn't been an easy one, there were a number of hidden issues with the place that caused us some concern, but we were able to find ways around them. It's a lovely block of land, 69 acres of it, with a bit of creek frontage, a lot of hillside, and some great stands of massive white box, which is an endangered species therefore protected.

I've decided not to get stressed about it, it either works out or it doesn't. Throwing it out to the universe, making the wish and trying to remain detached from the outcome. As I look back over the path that led us to this point in life, in this location, it seems just like a carefully organised holiday package, roller-coaster rides and all. If only I could remember what we ordered in the first place :-)

I read another example of this kind of universe in a post over at the blog by Lightening: Fast Tracking Our Dreams

So I've not gone totally loopy, yet...

My Mountain

It has now been over a month since the last attention was paid to this poor, neglected blog, and whilst I'd like to think it was because so much else has been happening it's difficult to pick what that might be. There has been a lot of "day job" to contend with, as well as a good dose of family events which have taken us far and wide.

The farmlet has been well and truly frosted now, and we've had a good dose of rain, 67ml for May and 69ml to date for June. We had a sprinkle this morning, but it looks as though it's clearing up out there now. Whilst we've had a couple of good falls in the 10 - 15ml range most of the time it's been the cold and dreary sort of stuff that keeps everything muddy but doesn't do anything to up the numbers. Just enough to prevent outdoor projects but not enough to give a glow of satisfaction.

The walls (from the last post) are essentially complete, at least that stage of them. I've still got to level out the path that runs above them, but the stairs are done and an extra little garden that starts just above the chookyard gate. I've still got to do the part behind the glasshouse, on the western side of a massive boulder, but I'm in no rush. Hopefully I'll get some pictures before Spring.

The rain has brought out a variety of fungi about the place, which got me to thinking. If fungi work to decompose organic matter, then the flush of fungal delights that now spring up after rain must indicate that we are seeing some improvement in the soil on the block. Where before there was impoverished clay that wouldn't support the thought of a toadstool now we have an abundance of them, so somehow we are heading in something like the right direction.

Maintaining an almost constant cover of some form is helping to prevent erosion, as are the mini-contour banks we've put in, so overall we should be retaining more soil, and also getting a better charge from the rain that does fall.

We've also been seriously considering our plans to move on from here. We had our local real-estate man through the place to give us some idea as to what would be worth fixing up and what is best left for the next "guardians". A part of us is a little scared to think that all this work could be bulldozed for the sake of subdividing to get two blocks from one, but we're going to forge ahead in the hope that the right people come along.

We have some motivating factors, the first being that we'd like more land to try out other things. related to this, that our two roast lambs to-be aren't comfortable on their 1/4 acre, even with the best of supplementary feed. It's also not really fair on the neighbours to be running this kind of operation in such close proximity. Now I'm a firm believer in "Peak Everything" (sort of like Peak Oil, only a bit worse) so it may seem strange that I would think this way. Shouldn't my neighbours be prepared to be happy with this kind of thing, as it may just be the way of the future? Perhaps they should, but then they don't necessarily think the way I do, and whilst council by-laws are the way they are, we're living on the borderline of acceptability and at the mercy of neighbourly good-naturedness (of which there certainly is enough, but I'd not like to push my luck too much further!). So it comes down to moving somewhere more appropriate.

In making this decision we've been plagued with thoughts of "what if it's too much for us to handle?", "why can't we be happy where we are?" etc etc. Beyond the rational decisions there are a whole plethora of emotional things to consider too. Thankfully I was most pleased to be browsing through a friend's blog (Down To Earth) where I came across the following link: The Gaping Void - How To Be Creative and found some inspiring thoughts within.

Whilst number 1 "Ignore everybody" is a good start, it was the detail of number 9 that got me most:

9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don't make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

This metaphorical Mount Everest doesn't have to manifest itself as "Art". For some people, yes, it might be a novel or a painting. But Art is just one path up the mountain, one of many. With others the path may be something more prosaic. Making a million dollars, raising a family, owning the most Burger King franchises in the Tri-State area, building some crazy oversized model airplane, the list has no end.
...snip...
Let's say you never climb it. Do you have a problem with that? Can you just say to yourself, "Never mind, I never really wanted it anyway" and take up stamp collecting instead?
...snip...

Emphasis is mine

This really spoke to me. An Everest is a challenge, but it's also something you want to accomplish with your life, regardless of whatever rational reasons there may be to not bother doing so. Sure it would perhaps be more sensible to work around this village life, making the most of it. We would probably have more spare time (to spend on what??) and more security too, but that's not the point is it? The point is that we have one valuable gift of a life that is given to us to do something with, and it turns out that that something is usually something you're interested in (otherwise there'd be no point doing it, would there?). Ever since childhood my most constant, back-of-the-mind idea has been living as a "farmer" (to loosely interpret the word as grower of food and other needs). It's something I always come back to, regardless of the other side-tracks and courses in my life.

Is this a desire for a type of art? I'm beginning to think that it is. I enjoy doing (or enjoyed, don't get much time these days) other forms of art, drawing, painting and carving generally, but if I look objectively at my life then I spend most of my spare time shaping this little block of land, working it to capture energy and turn it into life, into food, in a way that is useful and also aesthetically pleasing. I won't be giving up my day job (refer to other points in The Gaping Void, all very sensible IMO) but I can move on to another canvas. This place is perhaps the immature scrawlings and splashes of a beginning painter. I could keep reworking this first canvas over and over, but eventually it will get to the stage where I am expending energy and material resources purely out of boredom, changing things just for the sake of something to do, which doesn't sound so sensible to me. Far better to place this work in the hands of someone else to take the raw brushstrokes and fill in the fine detail as they mesh the fabric of this land with that other great canvas we all work upon, their lives.

(There is also the motivation of getting a larger shed, the one I've got now is filled to overflowing ;-) )

So we're putting the wheels into motion, slowly but surely. We've got a few jobs to do on the house before we could feel comfortable handing it over to someone else, and I'd like to finish off the hard landscaping here (hard as in solid framework, as well as hard work!), so we'll probably aim to put it on the market in Spring, though at a price high enough that if someone wants it straight away we are comfortably able to move. If it takes a lot longer to sell then we'll be okay with that, as we could wait another year or so before moving. I think the twins starting school will be a kind of deadline, best to start them where they'll stay for some years rather than trying to move them after 6 months or a year in a school. They've just turned 3, so that gives us two or three years to get it all done. If we begin to approach that time without any bites then we'll gradually reduce the price.

Know anyone who wants a nice spot in a village? :-)

Odd Jobs

Autumn certainly isn't in the rush it was last year, by now it had been and gone and Winter was well underway. Whilst there are obvious advantages to a long drawn out balmy Autumn it does have me a bit concerned what with climate change and all. Maybe Winter will never come??

Roses and cotton are both still putting out flowers, though some of the fruit trees have finally started to shed their leaves, and the two ash trees and the pistachio out the front are turning bronze-blood-red and golden yellow respectively. Some of the plants have the right idea, though the temperatures certainly aren't encouraging. We've had low twenties for weeks now, with overnight temps always above the mystical 5 degrees that seems required to set frosts in motion.

We obtained four new chooks recently, freebies from a notice in the window of the local store. At last we have chooks that lay eggs! The existing ones, Silver Grey Dorkings and a single Barnevelder and Spangled Hamburgh go off the lay at the slightest provocation, so we do a lot of feeding for little return. The new birds look to be Isa Browns or some similar factory breed, and they're living up to their reputation. Most days see four eggs come in from them. The Hamburgh has a go every now and then, but I think she's getting on a bit.

On the blacksmithing front I searched the big town for a source of charcoal and came up empty-handed. It looks as though I'm going to have to build myself a charcoal factory. I did try the compressed charcoal briquettes but it seems they have some additives that turn into a gluey slag, definitely not the best.

I've also finished the new blower, a much better one this time around. It is noisy though, and uses electricity, so I'll be looking to replace it with a manual one at some stage. I won't rush into it until the kids are big enough to power it reliably for me.

I'm starting to get into Winter mode on the jobs front, I've begun one rock wall near the chook house, and hopefully by the end of Winter it will be finished, along with a couple of small terraces across the back yard. I've got the spots ready for a couple of new fruit trees, but with our desire to move in the next couple of years we won't be spending a fortune packing the place with trees now. Who knows, the next people who take it on may bulldoze the lot, subdivide and sell it all off.

I plan on taking cuttings of all our fruit tree varieties this Winter, and then next year raising the rootstocks to go with them. It seems a bit backwards, but I learnt the proper method of propagating rootstock recently, but it was too late in the season to do it. In order to ensure I've got the needed material I'll take the cuttings now, that way if we should happen to strike it lucky and move sooner rather than later I've got all I need to reproduce the varieties we've already collected.